Baptist Church

1st of November 2014

Writing for this issue of Chipp News is not an easy exercise. I would hope that everyone recognises the importance of this particular month. It is likely that this is one of the most poignant and reflective months in our history. We continue to hear, and moreover to see, the effects of war and the terrible damage it does to all those involved, both civilians and serving men and women.

In this country, most of us have become immune and removed from these effects by nearly seventy years. Our attitudes and expectations are coloured by this lack of experience and very little can shake us from it. We may have become blasé about the whole sorry situation of war. However, this month gives us an opportunity to grasp, in some way, the enormity of what was a terrible period in not just our own country’s history, but for the whole of Europe and beyond.

I am not old enough to remember myself but I have been moved by the stories I have heard from family members and others who were there. Those memories, for them, are still raw and do not diminish. Somehow, for them, time does not heal the wounds and their wish is not to see others touched by the same. It is not in the telling that we find answers but in our listening. We should never stop listening to those voices because, if we do, we are in danger of experiencing the same horrors without realising it. That sounds similar to another quote that challenges us to keep listening: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.* I don’t know about you but, looking at my own past, the prospect of this scares me.
Love Jason, the man in the Manse
* George Santayana